Sunday, February 20, 2005

Tegan & Sara - "I Hear Noises"

Before this month all I knew about Tegan & Sara was that they were Canadian, sisters, and either lesbians or had a lot of lesbians as fans. And that they are totally cutes.Now I know that they don't actually make the earthy pop-folk typically associated with lesbians or people who may or may not in fact be lesbians or may or may not have some sort of lesbian fan base. They instead make, at least in the case of "I Hear Noises", songs that press Rentals-style three-chord pop stratospherics against slinky/stuttery almost-Chrissie-Hynde vocal lines in a way that is kind of hot and might even be sexy if it was possible for Canadian bands to evoke sexiness in songs.This song is the one for this month, the one that I get a little amped for when the song that precedes it comes on and I get even a little coiled up and ready to sing along with it and rock out to it on the sales floor in a way that might be embarrassing if I gave a fuck about how cool I come across in the eyes of dozens of roving packs of Midwestern moms/daughters and bad-hair-decision emo kids. Each month I have one song that does that, and they tend to be hook-intensive pop songs by predominantly female groups. We will discuss the reasons behind this trend in later entries (spec. Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" and the George Michael single), but basically I have the same psychophysiological reaction to pop music as 13 year-old girls and club-crazy gay men.